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Burundi Army Stages Coup, and New Fighting Is Feared

After two days of confusion about who was running Burundi, the Tutsi-dominated army announced a coup today, named a new President and dissolved Parliament.

The Burundi capital, Bujumbura, was reported to be quiet tonight after soldiers sealed the country's borders and airport, set up road blocks and moved the curfew from 9 P.M. to 7 P.M. Political parties were banned and the military said that anyone who tried to start a demonstration would be punished.

The announcement increased fears of renewed fighting in Burundi, where the Tutsi minority controls the army and has traditionally dominated the government. About 150,000 people have been estimated to have died in three years of clashes between Tutsi and the majority Hutu, some of whom have been waging a guerrilla campaign against the Tutsi. Both sides are accused of atrocities.

The newly named president, Maj. Pierre Buyoya, a Tutsi, is known as a moderate. He first came to power in a bloodless coup in 1987 and ran the country until 1993, when he arranged the democratic elections that led to the first Hutu presidency.

"We demand that the international community understand the purpose of our efforts," Mr. Buyoya said in a nationwide radio broadcast, the Associated Press reported. "What happened today was not a change of regime through ambition, glory or anything else. What happened today was an action of salvation."

In 1994, close to half a million people are believed to have been killed in the neighboring central African country of Rwanda, where the same ethnic mix prevails.

In an uneasy political balance in Burundi in recent years, the post of president has gone to a Hutu while the position of prime minister went to a Tutsi.

But on Tuesday, amid reports that the Tutsi-led Burundi military had surrounded government buildings, President Sylvestre Ntibantunganya sought refuge in the American Ambassador's residence, where he remained today. And on Wednesday, the main Tutsi political party said it was withdrawing support for the Government.

In New York, the United Nations struggled to assemble a military force that could intervene in the event of major violence between the ethnic groups. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali condemned the coup and said that "the international community will on no account accept a change of government by force or other illegitimate means in Burundi."

A senior diplomat in Burundi, reached by telephone and describing himself as pragmatist, said, "we're handling things under the table," by which he meant negotiations were going on with the coup's backers to prevent a civil war.

Officials in the Tutsi-led military said the coup was necessary to halt the increasing violence in the country. "The politicians have failed to solve the problems, and we have decided the country cannot continue like this," a military spokesman, Lieut. Col. Longin K. Minani, told the Associated Press.

But not all statements were so reassuring. In a BBC radio interview Colonel Minani said: "We don't care if the Hutus see this as a green light for war. We're going to fight them properly now, without their leaders."

Jerome Ndiko, a spokesman in Brussels for the largest Hutu rebel group, initially called for peace, saying: "Please, civilians, Hutu and Tutsi, don't kill yourselves. Be together." Then told of Colonel Minani's remarks, he said: "We'll go on to fight against the monoethnic enemy. We'll try to push the enemy back in barracks and force them into negotiations."

In Washington, a White House official said the United States condemned the coup. At the same time, officials were careful to praise Major Buyoya, the new president, as a moderate who had brought democracy to the country.

"He's no stranger to the United States, and he may represent the last chance at stability and the resolution of Hutu and Tutsi problems," a White House official said.

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"The President was no longer seen by moderate Tutsi as someone who could aid the survivial of any kind of government in Bujumbura," the official continued. "And he could not guarantee that extremist Tutsi would not take over the Government. This coup could be seen as a blocking movement to extremism."

As in Rwanda, the population in Burundi is 85 percent Hutu and 14 percent Tutsi, but the Tutsi dominate the army, civil service and business.

In a spasm of "ethnic cleansing" last year, army troops destroyed Bujumbura's last Hutu neighborhood. Hutu rebels, using refugee camps in Zaire as a base, control most of the country's northwest.

The deposed President, Mr. Ntibantunganya, was reportedly still at the residence of American Ambassador Morris Hughes tonight. On Tuesday, a furious crowd drove him away from a funeral for 340 Tutsi who had been massacred by Hutu rebels by pelting him with rocks and cow dung as soldiers and Prime Minister Antoine Nduwayo, a Tutsi, looked on and did nothing.

Fearing that he would be slain -- one Hutu predecessor as president was killed in a coup, while another died in a suspicious plane crash -- the 40-year-old former journalist asked for American protection.

Several ministers in the overthrown cabinet have taken refuge in the German Embassy. In announcing the coup, Colonel Minani said no one in the now-defunct Government would be harmed or arbitrarily arrested.

The disintegration of the coalition has been largely blamed on the fallout from a request made by the Hutu President and his Tutsi Prime Minister at a peace conference in Arusha, Tanzania, asking for an African peacekeeping force to help halt the bloodshed in Burundi.

Several countries, including Zambia and Tanzania, offered to join a peacekeeping force. But both Burundi leaders were immediately criticized by their political parties, and subsequent disagreement fractured the weak multiparty coalition.

The Tutsi-led army and Hutu rebel groups say they will attack any peacekeeping force that enters without their permission.

Major Buyoya overthrew Jean-Baptiste Bagaza in a 1987 coup. After he instituted the elections in April 1993, he was defeated by Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, in legislative elections.

The killing of President Ndadaye by renegade troops in a failed coup that October led to a wave of slaughter in Burundi in which 50,000 were killed.

In recent weeks, youth militias created to guard electrical substations and water supplies have marched through the streets, shouting the name of Mr. Bagaza, Major Buyoya's predecessor.

Mr. Bagaza, who was rumored to finance those militias and right-wing newspapers, said tonight that he is neither a candidate for president nor trying to whip up interest in a countercoup that would help him. But he was not encouraging about Major Buyoya or the deposed Mr. Ntibantunganya.

"I know the two men personally," he said. "They're each worse than the other."